In Spiritu
by LadySilver
Summary: An impromptu Halloween party goes a little awry. Halloween Fest Story.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: I hope I don't regret this ..._

**In Spiritu**

As soon as the Ouija board came out, Scott got up and left the room. He did so quietly, without a fuss. He could have just been going to the kitchen to grab another can of soda. But no one was fooled.

Stiles and Allison traded looks, silently debating with of them would be the one to follow. Both could not go or Scott would feel like he was being ganged up on, and that would only end with all three of them angry. "I'll do it," Stiles said, shoving himself up from the couch on which he'd been sprawled most of the evening.

"What's McCall's problem?" Jackson demanded. He was sitting with his back to the sofa, the TV remote in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. Though he was the only one drinking, everyone had noticed that he had yet to take a drink. He appeared to be wielding the bottle in some kind of protest at the fact that he was even at this gathering, rather than out with his much cooler friends.

"You don't have to be here," Allison had pointed out, the first—and last—time he complained about his social calendar.

"Yes, he does," Lydia answered in her usual chipper way. She stretched up on her toes to loop one arm around his shoulder and the other around Allison's. "I was not about to miss spending an evening with my best girl friend." Allison smiled grimly because, for the second time in less than a year, an evening she had meant to spend alone with Scott had turned into a group thing, and all because she had made the mistake of not prepping Lydia in advance that the "night out with Lydia" was meant to be a cover story.

Now they were all camped at Stiles's house, having an impromptu Halloween party. Trust Stiles to have a house stocked with candy, chips, and sodas sufficient to make an impromptu party doable. No one deigned to answer Jackson's question; Allison and Stiles both knew that he was only asking to be an ass.

"It's just a game," Stiles insisted, once he tracked Scott to the kitchen where the werewolf was standing with hands planted on the edge of the sink, staring out the window into the backyard. He knew his statement was the wrong thing to say as soon as he saw Scott's shoulders tense up, his hands tighten on the white enamel. "Look—" he rubbed a hand over his nose and chin, "—I didn't even know we _had_ a Ouija board…. OK, dude, I get it. The idea of contacting the spirit world scares you, even if it _isn't real_."

"You mean like werewolves," they both said at exactly the same time, Stiles anticipating and mimicking Scott's half-panicked inflection perfectly.

"Exactly," Stiles continued. "In the past ten months, the _only _supernatural thing we've encountered is werewolves. We haven't met or found or even heard about ghosts, or vampires, or zombies, o-o-or Batman!" He threw his hands up in exasperation.

"Batman?" Scott echoed. In his reflection in the window, Stiles saw his eyebrows go up. A flash of light outside erased the reflection.

Stiles shrugged. "It's all I could think of. Come on, man. There's nothing to worry about it."

"What if there is?" Scott replied, still staring out the window. A silent lightning storm had started high in the sky. Random bursts of blinding light illuminated the surroundings like a miscalibrated strobe. On the back deck, the safety light had been broken in a bout of pre-Halloween vandalism that also left the trees covered in streamers of toilet paper that Sheriff saw no reason to clean up until after the holiday ended. If the lightning storm turned to rain, he was going to regret that decision.

"Dude, I'll tell you what. If we succeed in contacting the great beyond, I'll make sure we ask about a cure. That's gotta be good, right?"

Before Scott could answer, Lydia interrupted with a sing-song, "Oh, boys! The séance awaits."

Scott and Stiles turned to see her standing in the kitchen doorway, a hand planted on one hip. The posture, combined with her strawberry hair styled up in a fountain-do, made her look like her intentions were far less than innocent. Reading an unguarded reaction from the best friends, she suggested thoughtfully, "We could always just skip straight to the orgy."

Stiles visibly gulped, sagged against the refrigerator.

Lydia tapped one long, polished nail against her lips in false contemplation, then: "Or, no. Séance it is." She swung around, using a lot more hip than necessary. Over her shoulder, she added, "More hands will still make it more fun."

"Why does she do that to me?" Stiles whined, as soon as she disappeared down the hall.

Scott smirked. "What goes around, comes around?" With as much as Stiles pushed people, namely those who were his best friend, around, Scott couldn't help but feel a mean thrill at seeing Stiles get teased by the one person who had always been able to push him around.

Stiles scowled at the general unfairness of the universe. Ever since the winter formal, Jackson and Lydia had resumed their position as the Beacon Hills High power couple. Lydia, however, had taken to flirting openly with Stiles, often to Jackson's face. Sadly, Stiles didn't mind. "Come on," he said, brightening up. "Let's go contact some spirits." He started heading back to the living room as if he assumed that Scott would follow him without further reticence.

The power went out.

A growl escaped Scott's throat before he could stop it. "I told you this was a bad idea," he snarled.

"Are you kidding? This is _perfect_!" Using the meager light from his iPod, Stiles started scrabbling through kitchen drawers and cabinets.

Scott, whose eyes had slipped reflexively into infrared, did not offer to help. He balled his hands, tried to convince himself that Stiles's judgement could be trusted, that in no way was he seeing omens that he wouldn't kick himself later for disregarding.

In the back of a cabinet, behind a bag of crushed, stale Doritos, Stiles finally located a box of seasonal candles and another of matches. With a crow of triumph, he held them over his head like he'd just used them to make the winning goal in a game.

They headed back to the living room with Scott in the lead while Stiles tried to walk and fumble with the matches at the same time.

Scott turned the corner into the room, stopped. Stiles ran into him, the match he had just succeeded in lighting falling to the floor and extinguishing. Scott pushed him back down the hall, up against the wall. "Lydia's glowing," he hissed into Stiles's ear.

Stiles rolled his eyes with his whole head, not able to make the gesture broad enough. "Dude," he hissed back, "the only thing glowing is your _eyes_. Cut it out!"

"I'm not making this up," Scott insisted, offended that he even had to defend himself, but he did force the wolf down, with the side effect that now neither of them could see.

Together, they peered around the corner. Unlike the hallway, the living room had windows. A flash of lightning revealed a silhouette of Jackson, still lounging against the couch, and Lydia and Allison flanking an open spot on the carpet where, presumably, the Ouija board was set up. It faded, leaving them as so many darkened forms against a dark background.

"…nothing to worry about. It's just a power outage," Allison was saying. She stood up and crossed to the window, pulled the curtain aside. "The streetlights are still working, so it's probably just a burnt out circuit in the house."

"What are you doing?" Lydia shrieked, all but tackling Allison, pulling her away from the curtain, which only fell part of the way back. "Are you _trying _to invite the serial killer in?"

Jackson waggled his fingers in front of him. "Oooohhhh," he wailed, imitating a ghost.

Lydia rounded on him, glared, one finger upraised like she was scolding him. "Not funny, Jackson," she snapped. "You're the one who made me watch all those horror movies. You'll thank me when we're all still alive in the morning."

"They were just movies, Lyd," Jackson responded, sounding tired, like they'd had this conversation more than once already. "If you want to talk real monsters—"

"Hey, guys," Stiles interrupted, falling into the room from the push Scott had given him. "I've got candles." Again, he held them aloft, realizing belatedly that probably no one could see what he was holding.

Lydia was still standing in front of the window when a staccato burst of lightning lit the sky behind her, one bolt seeming to feed off another. It finally ended, only for a low rumble of thunder to shake the house. Everyone was left blinking and shaking their heads.

"Wow," Allison said. She rubbed her eyes, worked her way over to the coach and collapsed back onto it.

At the same time Stiles added an awed, "That was so cool," the candles and matches forgotten in his hands.

No one except Scott heard Jackson's under-his-breath comment: "Why is Lydia glowing?"


	2. Chapter 2

"What are we waiting for?" Lydia asked to the assembled group of friends. "Come on, let's get this started. Tick, tock. It's almost midnight." Taking charge, as she was wont to do, she soon had the candles lit and spread out around the room, their flickering flames mostly serving to make more shadows rather than to diminish the ones already there. Enough illumination filtered in from the streetlamps to make the effect interesting rather than frightening.

Despite themselves, the group felt a building sense of anticipation. Something about sitting in a darkened house, knowing that no flick of a switch or push of a button would change that made it easier to accept the possibilities of All Hallow's Eve. The lightning storm continued outside, charging the air with a faint electric tingle.

"I've never done this before," Allison interjected. She inspected the board with its rows of letters and numbers arcing across its face, a _yes_ and _no_ printed independently at the top of the board, and a large _good bye_ at the bottom. "I mean, I've got the basic idea, but … I've heard stories." She said the last quietly, with a downward glance, afraid that she was setting herself up for ridicule if she admitted to believing any of those stories. She didn't. Er, maybe?

Lydia flounced to the carpet next to her, folding her legs crosswise. "Do you think I'd let anything bad happen?" she asked. "We just have to make sure to follow the rules…." She rested her elbows on her knees, her chin on her folded hands, and started to lay out those rules.

Jackson rolled his eyes. He could tell that she was making them all up as she went along. "Don't let go of the pointer while it's in motion." Ha! Seeing his opportunity to get some real answers, Jackson grabbed Scott's arm and pulled him down the hall.

Scott let him, shook free as soon as they were out of earshot of the rest of the group. "What's wrong, Jackson? You didn't have a locker to slam in my face?" His grip tightened around the empty Twizzler bag he held in one hand, and the pair of empty Coke cans in the other from a preempted attempt to clean up a little.

"Shut up, McCall," Jackson responded. "I know you see it, too." A tremble crept into his chin and voice. Though he still maintained his veneer of bravado at school and on the field, it was quicker than ever to develop cracks in private, especially on the almost non-existent occasions when he allowed himself to be alone with Scott. He shook his hand out, like touching Scott had burned him.

Scott sucked his lips back, brushed a hand through his hair, thought about playing dumb. But, what was the point? "Yeah, I see it, too," he conceded.

"All right. Now tell me why _I_ do."

Scott's eyebrows quirked. "We are talking about the fact that Lydia's glowing, right?"

Jackson rolled his eyes, discarded a half-dozen sarcastic responses before finally settling on, "Duh." His breath was warm on Scott's face and stale, smelling of chocolate and old grease. He really hadn't touched the beer.

"I don't know," Scott replied with a shrug. He turned so the hall opened behind him, not interested in letting Jackson keep the small amount of power he thought he had. A cold breeze wafted across his ankles, made him shiver. "Maybe because you're not completely human anymore, idiot." So much had happened the night of the winter formal that it had all melted into a blur, like a box of crayons left in the back window of a car in August.

Lydia had been attacked and, there'd been blood … and Jackson couldn't remember. He did recall going to Derek afterward and begging for the werewolf bite, and being told to wait. Scott had heard the story a bit differently. By Derek's admission, the new Alpha was not stupid enough to grant it. At all. Unfortunately, the previous scratches that Jackson had received had some lasting side-effects. This, apparently, was one of them.

"Whatever," Jackson snapped, shaking off the memories that wouldn't quite form. "So…?" He left the rest hanging in the air: _What about Lydia?_

Scott shrugged again. "Hell if I know. I can see it. That doesn't mean I know what I'm seeing."

Jackson mulled that over, discarded it. Scott might not have much of a poker face, but he'd had a lot of practice at not exactly telling the truth. Jackson suspected that this was one of those times and he wasn't going to put up with it. "I know you're holding out on me, McCall." He stabbed a finger at his younger rival. Scott did not flinch. "If this all blows up in our faces, I'm blaming you." He turned, his shoe squeaking on the tile floor, and stalked back to his spot by the couch.

Scott watched him go, then continued to the kitchen to discard the garbage in his hands as if that had been his plan all along.

Lydia's laugh chimed through the house. Allison's laugh soon sparkled along with it. "No, no, no. It doesn't work like _that_," Lydia said. "Look." She pushed the plastic piece out of the middle of the planchette and held it up, revealing a simple plastic disc that could have belonged to anything. "Do you really think this could trap a ghost? Jackson, sit there and try to look like you're having fun." She indicated a spot on the carpet with a wave of her hand and steeled her gaze at him, head slightly cocked, until he gave in and complied.

"So, are we trying to contact anyone in particular?" Allison asked. Her eyes flicked to the couch, where Stiles had landed. He was the only one of them with a deceased family member. A string of licorice dangled from his mouth. He waved her off.

"Of course not, silly," Lydia chirped. She stretched back and propped her feet up on Jackson's leg. "Why would we want to do that?"

Jackson wrapped one hand around her ankles and moved her feet pointedly to the floor. "Because it makes as much sense as everything else we're doing?"

"Stop being a killjoy," Lydia chided. She directed Allison and Jackson to rest their fingers on the planchette, assigning them the job of being the primary conduits.

Scott took a seat on the couch next to Stiles, resolutely staying out of the way. He might consent to being in the room, but he could not be persuaded to participate.

Stiles popped another string of licorice into his mouth, slouched back into the cushions. "I'm just going to stay over here, because, you know, concentrating—not really my thing. Do you think we could, like get started, though, because I've got all kinds of questions."

Everyone groaned in unison. Once Stiles got started asking questions, no one else would be able to get a word in.

The point soon seemed moot, though. After several minutes of the planchette staying stolidly in the middle of the board, Jackson snapped, "This isn't working."

"You just gotta empty your head," Stiles quipped. "It shouldn't be that hard for you, Whittemore." Scott snorted, looked away. He smiled at Allison, resisted the urge to look back and meet his best friend's eyes, knowing that once that started laughing, they wouldn't be able to stop.

"Be patient," Lydia responded in a sing-song. She lay back on her elbows, again propping her feet on Jackson's leg. This time he left them there. Another flash of lighting lit the room. It seemed farther away, the storm finally moving off. "The spirits work on their own time."

They waited, Allison and Jackson resting their first two fingers on the pointer. They tried not to let their impatience creep through in case it tainted the results.

The clock struck midnight without anyone noticing. Jackson and Allison felt the planchette slide across the board, uncontrolled by the light touch of their fingers. It circled the board, as if searching. They both sucked in a breath. Allison almost pulled her fingers back reflexively, remembered Lydia's warning. Finally, it slid to the bottom of the board, hesitated, then settled on top of _Good Bye._

"What do you think that was about?" Allison asked, looking around at her three friends. Would they believe that she hadn't pushed the planchette? Would they believe that Jackson hadn't either? The pointer had truly moved on its own.

"Happy Halloween," Lydia said, though she knew that they could no longer hear her, no longer even remembered that they had spent the evening together. "See you next year." But she would never forget.

"See, Scott," Stiles said. "I told you nothing would happen. You've gotta get it through your head that..."

She faded away, unaware that her vanishing made Scott's pupils dilate, irises flare briefly.

END

_A/N: Fulfills AU Bingo square #13: Wild Card: Ghosts. Happy Halloween._


End file.
